This article presents the Bremen Autonomous Wheelchair as a platform for the realization of rehabilitation applications. In the field of assistive technologies, the necessities for safety on the one hand and adaptability to various impairments of potential users on the other hand dominate design decisions. A safe system architecture for the Bremen Autonomous Wheelchair is proposed and a hierarchy of low level application modules is presented. Furthermore, a route navigation approach that provides a high level of support is described in detail.